Amazon's Partnership With Anthropic Keeps Deepening. Is This the Catalyst Amazon Stock Needs?

Key Points

Amazon recently pledged up to $25 billion in fresh investment for Anthropic, expanding its AI footprint.

In return, the AI start-up committed to spending more than $100 billion on Amazon Web Services over the next decade.

While the infrastructure build-out is costly, the underlying business is generating exceptional cash flow to fund it.

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Earlier this week, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced it planned to invest up to $25 billion in the artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Anthropic.

The deal, which includes a $5 billion initial investment and up to $20 billion tied to commercial milestones, significantly deepens the relationship between the two companies. It builds on the e-commerce and cloud computing giant's previous $8 billion investment in the AI maker.

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But the partnership isn't a one-way street. In exchange, Anthropic committed to spending more than $100 billion on Amazon Web Services (AWS) -- Amazon's cloud computing business -- over the next 10 years, securing up to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity to train and run its Claude models.

"Our users tell us Claude is increasingly essential to how they work, and we need to build the infrastructure to keep pace with rapidly growing demand," Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said about the partnership.

With Amazon essentially locking in a major customer for its cloud infrastructure and custom AI chips, is this the catalyst the stock needs to go even higher?

A booming cloud business

To understand why Amazon is willing to invest so heavily in Anthropic, it helps to look at the momentum in the company's cloud computing segment.

AWS is seeing accelerating growth. In the fourth quarter of 2025, AWS revenue surged 24% year over year to $35.6 billion. That marked an acceleration from the 20% growth rate the segment posted in the third quarter of 2025.

And this revenue is highly profitable. AWS is the primary engine driving Amazon's operating income, which came in at $25.0 billion in the fourth quarter.

Further, this segment should receive an incremental boost from Anthropic -- especially with this deal in place.

By partnering with Anthropic, Amazon is ensuring that its custom silicon, specifically its Trainium chips, which are used in its AWS business, gets put to work at scale.

"Anthropic's commitment to run its large language models on AWS Trainium for the next decade reflects the progress we've made together on custom silicon, as we continue delivering the technology and infrastructure our customers need to build with generative AI," said Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in a statement regarding the partnership.

The heavy cost of AI

But there is a catch to this explosive growth. Competing in the AI infrastructure space requires an extraordinary amount of capital.

Amazon is reportedly planning to spend about $200 billion on capital expenditures this year alone, with the bulk of it directed toward AI infrastructure and data centers.

A spending surge of this magnitude can understandably make investors nervous. After all, when a company pours that much cash into physical assets, it can pressure free cash flow in the near term.

Fortunately, Anthropic's commitment to spend more than $100 billion on AWS over the next decade helps de-risk some of that capital outlay.

Is Amazon stock a buy?

On the surface, Amazon stock looks expensive. Shares currently trade at a price-to-earnings ratio of 36. But investors should note how significant the company's cash flow is. For the trailing 12 months, Amazon's operating cash flow rose 20% year over year to $139.5 billion. This means the stock is trading at 20 times operating cash flow. While this is still a premium valuation, it's not egregious. But it's also probably not cheap enough to make the stock a buy.

I'd argue that after the stock's more than 20% run-up over the past month, shares are now closer to fair value -- even with this news of Anthropic committing to spend more than $100 billion on AWS. Shares now look fairly valued rather than undervalued.

Yes, this deepening relationship with Anthropic helps. But good outcomes from Amazon's AI investments may now be fully priced into the stock, making it more of a hold than a buy.

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Daniel Sparks and his clients have no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.